Jesus fucking christ I understand why someone says this has gone way off the topic.

Look I just think we need a page after the sign up saying the rules in big red letters and specifically stating we are not a dollars website and do not associate with drr don't talk about it on chat then make them solve a puzzle (not that hard like bolded or letters they have to look in the rules to spell a word. It worked on RP boards)

Now this has gone everything has gone to different topics. Guys calm your tits and chill.

We need a mix of serious and funny. Why don't we just make a spam tag that we can filter just like nsfw? Give the newbies some leash and chill. Just try to be nice and not get all up on how some of them say desu desu (though if it gets too much ask them to stop). We all had our weeaboo phase, just let them ride it out. Just now we have blackmail for the future if they stay.

I know CL has a lot to be done. Things take time to be perfect. One day we probably will have stickies, have links to our DA/youtubes/gamertags what we used to have on our profile (that would be really helpful), and other things. But they're taking time out of their life to code for this place for free and keep an eye on this place. The admins, mods, and ranger have my eternal respect (and forever have honor). I might not agree with them all the time, but we all have our opinions.

Now i've spent too much time on this I'm gonna have fun.

Ok, @someone, fine job with the intent, but this kinda spiraled in the wrong direction.

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To point some things out:

Anything relating to suggestions, criticism, or bashing can be freely sent to hello@thecolorless.net.

This is copied and pasted from the Rules. We have seen none of these in the inbox, so we can only assume that you have not sent them. These complaints would be best handled by sending them there, or PM'ing one of the three members of the administration/development staff, @Trev, @acostoss, or @Gargron.

Next, as has been stated, traffic is up, use is up, even our main-site bounce rate has fallen. Yes, we are missing a couple features that were on the old site, and are working them in as we go. We are working on making this site as usable, stylish, and easy to develop upon as possible. Some features that are deemed as "ineffective" or "bad" may be dropped, such as the *booru clone.

The FAQ is linked to at the top of every page of the forums, as well as in the user settings and even the signup page. If a user misses all of those, it is out of our hands. One cannot be so blind and expect to not walk into a tree.

Finally, the idea of punishment for those that abuse new members is welcoming. While it already falls under abuse, it is not yet publicly spoken of. Either way, it is terrible, turns users away, and generally makes the forum worse. It turns the site into nothing but a circlejerk, moreso than it has already become with the "oldfags" and "midfags".

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On a personal level, to @DarkChaplain.

Most of this was written in regards to you, yes, though it fits most people. You complain much of what isn't being done of the site, yet you know nothing of the code, the implementations, the staff chat, the secret wikis, the side projects, and many other things we have on our plates. You know, outside of our real life duties that we all fulfill. @Trev has college, jobs, and a girlfriend to take care of. @acostoss has a job, side work, and social obligations. @Gargron has school finishing up, a move to uni, moving out for the first time, and other large life changes. We don't have all the time in the world to dedicate to this site, though we all try our damnedest. If you wish to have us work better, help us by sending us suggestions and requests, not via chat, but by the ways that we lay out and advertise. Try to see just how much work goes into this site, something that just costs us money, something that just steals our times, something that stresses us out, something we do for the community.

Basically, stop being so negative, and send a goddamn email to hello@thecolorless.net.

---

Thank you for flying with The Colorless, hopefully noone causes us to eject and leave you to crash.

@Trev wasnt talking bout the sites traffic... I know we have gotten alot better in that sense

@Darkchaplain Instead of waiting for the admin to fix the problems you report, why don't you try to learn some programming languages yourself?

Exactly what I was going to say earlier, but didn't. That does not even need explaining.

@Kirn I received my "thanks for the bug report, xtc" after sending an e-mail. Just saying, because you've asked about it.

@DarkChaplain @Kirn: You're welcome to make your own site if you think you can do it better. Maybe we can compare notes :) We started with CodeIgniter, toast.css, and PHPMyAdmin.

As of now though, I'd just appreciate it if you'd put bugs and suggestions in the email address that -all- of us read instead of handing requests directly to just one of us. Having a permanent hardcopy of requests available to the entire administrative team makes it easier to vote on issues and their importance.

@Kirn: Well... frankly, if sending it to email won't get it pushed through, then it's not going to happen. One of the major points of contention with the staff has been committing changes without group approval.

As far as the history of the badges... of those folks, who is still here? "The victors write history" in a sense, and the hammer may be the Internet's thing, but the shovel is now distinct to CL. A bit of history, if you will. A commemoration of an ancient battle. While maybe your humility does not stand for it, the shovel is in your honor.

All I'm saying is all that time spent criticizing could be better spent learning how to fix the problems you've reported.

With @Kirn and @DarkChaplain already being excellent black box testers, I think they have the potential of becoming excellent white box testers as well. ^_^

Sorry, I'm not familiar with your relationship with the admin.

I was thinking, if you guys learned a basic language, perhaps they could give you bits of the site code to fix.

I won't say anymore. Sorry for intruding.

@Kirn: I removed the massive image. It took up way too much screen.

At any rate, certainly by now you've noticed that we're not removing your criticism as long as it's not more than reasonably impolite.

Suggestions are always welcome but there is a workflow to maintain, and fixing problems is not as simple as "you tell us, we do it" anymore. There is a checklist, a testing site, testing procedures, a bug tracker, and an order of priority for everything that gets done. Half-baked implementations of new ideas have bugs, and that makes everyone (especially me!) unhappy. And between the three of us, it takes time to get to everyone's suggestions. The easiest way to keep them organized? The inbox.

Additionally, CL isn't our only project anymore. I administer another forum, acostoss works on several sites and projects, and Gargron is working on both A&C and side projects for pay.

Rest assured that -somebody- is bringing user suggestions to the table every time the administrators have a meeting, and that at least half of them make it to the drawing board. Some of them don't. That's just how that goes. But ask either of the other admins, and they will tell you that I have drilled user satisfaction and site maintenance into both of them every chance I get.

We take CL every bit as seriously as the users do.

Additionally, suggestions are more than welcome. I'd just rather they not be injected into lots of discussions or used to derail threads.

Hey, um, guys. How about we listen to the admins and message them instead of throwing hissyfits and making threats about said errors? I'm sure they'd be nice and try to fix it up right away, if they're not too busy with their personal lives.

Seriously, all this drama is starting to get tiring and very childish. (I'm not knocking OP, or the admins for that matter, just a few people.)

This is just a suggestion, of course.

As a neutral party, and someone who is totally unbiased in everything ever Xbox Sucks, I mostly agree with @Kirn on this one. I believe its better to have an open public thread to discuss updates to the site rather than us emailing them to you guys because:

• Lets us feel like we have a say
• It promotes interesting threads
• Helps address problems
• Can provide input to existing suggestions - improving them
• Generate new discussions and threads: an example of this would be how our previous improve the site thread sparked a new thread on reviving the CL e-newzine
• Test the waters: Not everyone enjoys some of the changes to the site (I can't think of a time when not many people disliked a change other than the CL 2.0 upgrade, but I'm sure DC and K-dawg can remind us of some )
• Will stop/prevent us asking the same questions
• It will keep us updated. Not everyone knows about the Trello page. And I know that we have the news banner thing that pops up but if a user has been gone for a few weeks and wants to find out any changes, then this theoretical thread would be the place to go.

Guys, why did we even do this in the first place? Why the radical shift in workflow? Why move most everything meta to somewhere offsite? In short, meta is the death of forums and this way is much more organized.

Suggestion threads would work in much the same way that emails do now, but would be cluttered with a lot more. Bashing by other users, suggestions about joke features, and flaming when we say "no, that is a bad idea". An email is much cleaner. A message pops up, we read it, we discuss it, bring it up with affected parties, and then make a decision whether it will be implemented (which it usually is), and then set it in order on the Trello.

If anyone sends an email to thee address, they are replied to. It may be a simple "Sorry, but that idea is not exactly something we feel is worth implementing. We'll keep it in mind, but don't get your hopes up." or a long discourse about how we like their idea, how to improve it, and other things.

Now, as for the "without group approval" clause, this was a problem in the past where some members of the staff would get a suggestion they think was fun, they'd develop it, and push it to the live site in a couple hours without speaking with any members of the staff about it. This often resulted in half-baked, buggy features without proper testing, and features that would never be used, or at least not for their intended purpose. By having to have group approval for something, we make sure that:

1. All admins have a say. We are a group, and we work as a group should. Unilateral decisions have no place there.

2. We can get in contact with possibly affected parties, including the mod staff, ranger staff, or users, to have them help test and provide critique.

I cannot count how many times we've gone into chat, had users test something on dev, and provide feedback right then and there. How are we not listening to user feedback then, and making it seem as if users do not have a say?

Looking at different sites, let us think about when they have suggestion threads.

• Gaia or dA?

  No, not really worth it with the huge userbase.

• 4chan?

  Nope, again.

• Reddit?

  Nope.

• Little forums?

  No, they are usually on phpBB or something similar.

• Webapps?

  Possibly, though only in the beginning when they are starting out, then they move to a bug tracker.

• Open source projects?

  Bug tracker.

Finally, I must agree that a "you tell us, we do it" sort of relationship is catastrophic. Think back to the old site, where we had a ton of unused, simplistic, buggy features that had no real use but to serve as a clone for other, better webapps. They may have been fun at first, but were quickly forgotten by the users. Now, we have a review process with all three admins, three people with rich histories in management, UX, design, bug fixing, and site security. Three very different backgrounds that allow us to catch most every problem before it happens.

Oh, and

Hey, um, guys. How about we listen to the admins and message them instead of throwing hissyfits and making threats about said errors? I'm sure they'd be nice and try to fix it up right away[...]

Causing us to be unproductive with actual work by responding to this thread must be the hidden motive.

@Kirn It isn't "because others do it that way" but "it is better for the site that way".

Did you even read this part?

Guys, why did we even do this in the first place? Why the radical shift in workflow? Why move most everything meta to somewhere offsite? In short, meta is the death of forums and this way is much more organized.

Suggestion threads would work in much the same way that emails do now, but would be cluttered with a lot more. Bashing by other users, suggestions about joke features, and flaming when we say "no, that is a bad idea". An email is much cleaner. A message pops up, we read it, we discuss it, bring it up with affected parties, and then make a decision whether it will be implemented (which it usually is), and then set it in order on the Trello.

This is exactly why others do it that way. Meta unchecked is death, but community input is always needed. I chose my examples as they are sites with which you would be experienced with, ones you know of, not sites that noone has ever heard of.

I hardly see why pointing out what is the best practice standard is bad reasoning. Conformity to expected practices is a good thing, I am sure.